The election cost the Tories their crucial competitive advantage: a reputation for competence

  • 29 September, 2017
  • Politics
  • Polling

Published in the Telegraph on 29 September.

In January 1993, the Conservative Party’s average poll rating was 
39 per cent. Twelve months later it had fallen to 31 per cent, and there it stayed, or thereabouts, for more than a decade. Throughout that time, and until after their third consecutive general election defeat, the Tories suffered from a fatal combination of flaws. People did not think the party was on their side or in touch with life as they lived it, and neither did they think it was up to the job of running the country.

It would be a bit much to say the Tories are in the same predicament today. When, in 2005, I published Smell The Coffee – an analysis of public opinion in which I set out the scale of the challenge they faced – the party had won less than a third of the vote, and just 198 seats.

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